Wastewater and environmental surveillance (WES) – the analysis of water and environmental samples like sewage to enable early, non-invasive tracking of biological and chemical markers across a population – is a powerful and increasingly common public health tool. When paired with clinical data, it offers a real-time window into community health that can inform faster, more targeted responses to infectious disease. However, its use in carceral settings like jails and prisons remains ethically underexamined.

In a brief analytic essay in the American Journal of Public Health, a team comprised of Boston University and University of Louisville researchers found that carceral WES is neither fully covered by human subjects protections nor fully accountable to traditional public health guidelines, producing a fragmented regulatory landscape in which some safeguards impede informed and effective research while others fail to prevent misuse or harm to incarcerated individuals and surrounding communities.

In a new NIH-supported study in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, researchers detected significant risk associations for vascular and Alzheimer’s dementias among American Indians for four previously-identified key risk factors: limited education, hypertension, social isolation, and depression.

The VCU and Pitt-led study is the first of its kind in the United States to assess the cardiovascular impact of hormone therapy during perimenopause.

University of Louisville researchers have discovered that longer periods of exposure to air pollution have measurable negative effects on the heart and overall health. Based on analysis of data from multiple studies of heart rate variability and pollution, researchers in UofL’s Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute determined that after about three hours of exposure to pollution, there is a small but significant decline in heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a key measure of the nervous system stress response and contributes to the regulation of the heart. Lower HRV has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease and cardiac events.